Essential iPhone Apps for Synthesis South Burlington VT

Intrepid developer Chris Wolfe has taken some of these concepts and created an extraordinary little app called Jasuto. Stocked with a massive array of both classic and exotic components, Jasuto is a 21st century modular synth in the form of an iPhone app. Read on for details.

Essential iPhone Apps for Synthesis

By Francis Preve

Back when we first covered the iPhone , there were a few tantalizing apps – like Noise.io, Intua Beatmaker, and IR-909 – that alluded to the power lurking within this device. More recently, we thoroughly investigated the one-two punch of Audiofile Engineering’s FiRe field recorder and Blue’s nifty Mikey iPhone/iPod microphone.

With well over a hundred apps to sift through on the App Store, it’s become a tad daunting to find the real instruments among the toys, so here’s a collection of truly useful synthesis apps that will get your juices flowing next time you’re chillin’ at an airport gate.

A few years back, an experimental synthesis instrument called the Reactable wowed the electronic music world with a wholly new approach to modular synthesis. Using a large “intelligent” tabletop surface, users can rearrange virtual geometric objects – oscillators, filters, LFOs - to create sounds. The amount of modulation was governed by the proximity of these objects to each other. This prototype oozed Minority Report coolness and its YouTube videos became an instant viral hit among synthesists.

Reactable video .

Intrepid developer Chris Wolfe has taken some of these concepts and created an extraordinary little app called Jasuto. Stocked with a massive array of both classic and exotic components, Jasuto is a 21st century modular synth in the form of an iPhone app.

While we could exhaustively list its features, the darn thing is only ninety-nine cents – less than the price of many songs in the iTunes store. So go grab Jasuto now and set aside a few hours to get lost in a magical new rabbit hole of sonic goodness.

Once you’ve discovered the joy of Jasuto, contemplate this: Mr. Wolfe is currently developing a VST version of this gem. Here’s a link to his early beta for the curious.

VST beta

Pictured: Jasuto’s littleDiddy preset, which delivers a quirky little groove all by itself.

iSynDeveloper: AudioMidi.com/VirSyn Price: $4.99 Website iTunes Link

Keyboard’s own Mitchell Sigman had a big hand in developing iSyn and his years of synthesis experience – combined with the expertise of the folks at VirSyn – has resulted in a comprehensive synth/sequencer that’s a must-have for on-the-go electronica producers.

iSyn’s synthesis engine (pictured above) is loosely based on the Minimoog : three oscillators into a 4-pole low pass filter, followed by an amp module that sports some yummy overdrive options. Throw in a couple of envelopes and an LFO and you’ve got all of the essentials for creating classic synth patches.

The drum machine features eight kits, including the obligatory 808 and 909, along with Simmons, Linn and a few original options.

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